The U.N.'s Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Alain Noudéhou, has released an urgent appeal for $1.7 billion dollars to help 6.6 million people facing food insecurity.
The U.N. released its South Sudan humanitarian response plan for 2021 Tuesday, with an urgent appeal for $1.7 billion dollars to combat growing food insecurity and other threats.
The U.N.’s Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Alain Noudehou, said the funds were needed to help 6.6 million people by the end of the year.
“We have three major goals. The first is to make sure to save lives and protect people in need of protection," Noudehou said. "The second, you need to make sure we have access to services such as water and sanitation [so that] the health of people do not become sick from other diseases. And the third is, we have to start to look at how we help the people to recover from where they were with effects(?) in livelihood, going forward.”
Noudehou noted South Sudan, Africa’s youngest country and one of its poorest, has been struggling with communal conflict, the added challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and frequent flooding.
“In addition to COVID 19, you recall 2020 was a year of another massive flooding that the country has experienced, displacing millions of people in 2020," Noudehou said. "And that was in addition to the flooding that the country had faced in 2019 when, barely recovering from that, when the second flooding had started, and the third. You recall that the entire communal conflict also has basically sparked a little bit out of control during the year 2020.”
Noudehou said they would prepare for the coming rainy season by fixing dikes and roads and moving emergency supplies into place to avoid being cut off by floods.
He said South Sudan’s government needed to prioritize security to make sure that people who need assistance can receive it.
Noudehou said if humanitarian agencies don’t get the funding in a timely manner their remaining resources may soon be depleted.
Separately, the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Tuesday appealed for $1.2 billion dollars to support 2.2 million South Sudanese refugees living in camps in neighboring countries.